I think I want to start working on stand alone projects and not have to focus on telling a story over the course of 2 or 3 movies. People always say when you're writing you should leave a few things open just in case you want to revisit the story in another movie but I think I want to try to make a stand alone film and leave it all on the screen .
Both Wicked Carnival and Sins of Man were originally planned to be stand alone films but whn I was writing Sins of Man I thought about a sequel so I started making notes then as I started writing Sins of Man II I started thinking about making a trilogy and started writing notes for Part III and at the end of 30 days I had written the three scripts (The first drafts anyway) .
This is something that happened organically during the writing of the scripts and during the rewrite of Sins of Man II : Vengeance (Originally titled Sins of Man II : Revenge of Mortis) I started to see a change in my writing style and my attention to detail and because of this change it only took two tries to get the script shoot ready .
During the writing of the current version of Sins of Man III : Tribulation (Originally titled Sins of Man III : Return of Mortis) I started to focus more on storytelling and creating solid kill scenes and also developing the characters in a way that fit the story and think that this script is the best I have ever written.
NOTE : The original titles where based on my love of the Halloween franchise and the error in my choices was pointed out to me by Chris Fyfe who told me "they are too cliche" and upon thinking about it I agreed and we worked together to come up with Vengeance and Tribulation for the titles of the sequels much better names in my opinion .
I always want to pay tribute to the horror films that I grew up watching but sometimes I get too caught up in it and it effects my decision making in a negative way . This is ONE of the MANY things I've learned over the course of the last several years .
I try to name my characters, towns, buildings etc. after previous people and places in my movies because I think it's cool to leave those easter eggs in there for long term horror fans of course the younger audience will often email me and ask me about this character's name or why I named the college Cunningham College and I answer them and after that they understand it alittle bit better .
I'm going to make a reveal about the origin of the JJ character's name . I'm a huge fan of the actress AJ Cook who horror fans will remember from Final Destination 2 but most people know her as FBI Agent / Profiler Jennifer Jareau aka JJ from the TV series Criminal Minds this is where my character Jennifer Jaymes gets her name from in Sins of Man .
I like playing with character's names and who they are and yes I will use aspects of other horror characters and TV characters to create my characters and no I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all, with that said there are some folks who don't like that and that is completely fine with me. I'm going to continue to do it because I think it's important to play tribute to these actors and their characters of the past .
Now keep in mind I don't use the character's whole name I usually use either their first name or last name never the same combination an example would be Nancy Kruger from Sins of Man : Rise of Mortis Nancy as in Nancy Thompson and Kruger as in Freddy Kruger .
I do this because it's like a game within the movie to see how many names fans can find . I like to have fun with you guys like that .
In closing I want to say that as artists we should always continue learning and having fun with our projects because once it stops being fun then it becomes work and then we start to lose ourselves in the process .
STAY HUMBLE, STAY HUNGRY MY FRIENDS :)